Initiatives

Overview

In the 1990s, Congress enacted major changes to our banking policies. These changes untethered banks from their communities, allowed federally insured banks to engage in speculative trading, and fueled a massive wave of mergers.

Overview

Access to the Internet is an essential infrastructure for any community that cares about economic development, quality of life, and educational opportunities. Unfortunately, most communities are presently dependent on a few unaccountable absentee corporations that act as gatekeepers to...

Overview

Wind and sun are available everywhere, so renewable energy can be economically harnessed at small scales across the country. This nature of renewable energy, and the exponential increase of renewable energy generation, promises to decentralize the nation’s grid system. ...

Overview

At the founding of the American Republic the word “private” had pejorative connotations. Derived from the Latin word “privare”, private meant to divide or tear apart. A privateer was a pirate. The word “public” was an honorable adjective, often...

Overview

ILSR's Waste to Wealth program helps communities across the country create policies and practices that address citizens' environmental concerns and economic needs. We help citizens fight the incinerators and landfills that pollute their air and water, and drive property...

| Written by Chloe Ashford| No Comments| Updated on Jun14, 2017The content that follows was originally published on the Institute for Local Self-Reliance website at https://ilsr.org/energy-democracy-media-roundup-week-of-june-12-2017/

This week in Energy Democracy news:

We check in on the status of Nevada’s net metering legislation, Kansas City leads the U.S. in Electric Vehicle adoption, and the U.S. solar market remains on a strong upward trajectory.

An unconventional approach to grassroots organizing in Wisconsin’s capital city has in recent years tipped incumbent utility Madison Gas & Electric (MGE) toward policies that favor consumers and renewables, a distinct shift in a state held back for years by entrenched monopolies with outdated business plans.

Following rapid growth across the industry in 2016, the United States solar market added 2,044 megawatts of new capacity in the first quarter of 2017.

As installations grow, prices continue to fall to new lows, with utility-scale system prices dropping below the $1 per watt barrier for the first time, according to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) latest U.S. Solar Market Insight report.

Tesla, which is suing the state in federal court in Grand Rapids, has subpoenaed records of communications between the Michigan Automobile Dealers Association, key state lawmakers, and Gov. Rick Snyder just prior to the passage of a 2014 law that bars manufacturers from selling directly to customers and requires them to sell through franchised dealerships.

Nationwide Energy Democracy News:

Last week, President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. But it will take more than one speech to pull out: Under the rules of the deal, which the White House says it will follow, the earliest any country can leave is Nov. 4, 2020. That means the United States will remain a party to the accord for nearly all of Mr. Trump’s current term, and it could still try to influence the climate talks during that span.

Nearly three-fourths of U.S. consumers have at least heard of smart meters and the smart grid, according to a longitudinal study published by the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC), an Atlanta-based nonprofit that does market research for industry stakeholders on energy consumers.

About Chloe Ashford

Chloe Ashford is the communications assistant for all of ILSR’s initiatives, and is responsible for helping to make ILSR’s work more widely known among the general public as well as funders. A rising senior at Oberlin College, she will graduate in 2018 with a degree in English and Anthropology.